Site Navigation

Site Mobile Navigation

The Guns of September

President Bush yesterday offered an eloquent, forceful and overdue call for the U.N. to hold Saddam Hussein accountable.

Just one problem: He cited no evidence of any immediate threat, no reason that invading Iraq is any more urgent today than it was in, say, 2000, when Mr. Bush as a candidate huffed and puffed about Saddam but never shared with voters any plans for an invasion.

For months there have been hints about intelligence that the administration supposedly has gathered about an imminent Iraqi threat and about links to terrorism. So it was deflating to hear again that Saddam is a monster whose regime tortures children in front of parents. All true -- as it was a decade ago.

Contrast Mr. Bush's appearance with a legendary moment at the United Nations. On Oct. 25, 1962, during the Cuban missile crisis, Ambassador Adlai Stevenson denounced the new Russian missile sites in Cuba.

It's the Bush administration that raised the parallel to the missile crisis, noting that Kennedy had considered pre-emptive strikes. Fair enough.

Yet it is the differences that are most telling. To begin with, Kennedy used the U.N. spotlight to offer specific, incontrovertible evidence of an urgent new threat -- and then he opted not for an invasion of Cuba but for an internationally supported naval quarantine.

''Yes, Kennedy did consider a lot of alternatives, including military strikes,'' recalled Theodore Sorensen, a key aide to Kennedy during the crisis. ''But after considering the innocent civilians who would be killed, considering the international law that would be broken, Kennedy rejected that possibility.''

President Kennedy was deeply conscious that wars can slip out of control, and during the crisis he read Barbara Tuchman's ''Guns of August.'' Mr. Sorensen recalls Kennedy telling aides that he didn't want future generations asking how the missile crisis had spiraled into war and nobody having a good answer.

An error has occurred. Please try again later.

You are already subscribed to this email.

In his speech yesterday, President Bush displayed Kennedy's toughness, resolve and even eloquence. But he did not display the other qualities of statesmanship: humility about the risks of miscalculation, a passion to avoid war.

Graham Allison, a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government who has written a book about the missile crisis, noted that Kennedy had stipulated that the missiles absolutely had to be removed from Cuba. But Kennedy turned first to diplomacy and a blockade. He offered the Russians a graceful exit and thus saved lives and avoided a dangerous spin into the unknown.

Today as well, why shouldn't war be a last resort instead of the first tool that President Bush grabs off the shelf?

''The fundamental question is left unanswered: Why initiating war against Saddam is better than the next option, which is deterring and containing him,'' Professor Allison said. ''You could agree that this is an evil guy -- he is evil -- who defied the U.N. resolutions -- he did -- and still ask why he is not susceptible to the same treatment that was used against Stalin, who was also evil and dangerous and cheated.''

A succession of presidents chose to deter and contain Stalin -- rather than invade and occupy Russia -- just as every president until now has chosen to deter and contain Saddam.

Before launching a war, Mr. Bush still needs to show two things: first, that the threat is so urgent that letting Iraq fester is even riskier than invading it and occupying it for many years to come; second, that deterrence will no longer be successful in containing Saddam.

How would J.F.K. have handled Iraq?

''As a believer in the U.N., he would have done everything he could, with U.S. muscle, to get U.N. inspectors in there,'' Mr. Sorensen believes. Such a Kennedyesque approach, built around robust international inspections backed by the threat of force as a last resort, would also reduce the political fallout of war if it eventually erupted.

Unfortunately, what we still have not heard from Mr. Bush is a compelling case for the one course of action on which he seems fixated -- immediate war.

We are continually improving the quality of our text archives. Please send feedback, error reports,
and suggestions to archive_feedback@nytimes.com.

A version of this op-ed appears in print on September 13, 2002, on Page A00027 of the National edition with the headline: The Guns of September. Today's Paper|Subscribe